Facebook Bans Company For Using Dead Rape Victim In Dating Ad

When it comes to the world of advertisements, there are some lines that you just do not cross, although at times, some of the more “creative” minds out there tend to blur the lines. Facebook, one of the world’s big names when it comes to social networks, recently issued an apology after they realized that a dating company actually made use of images of a girl who ended her life after allegedly being raped. Not only that, to make a stand so that nothing of this sort will happen in the future, the offending company has also been banned by Facebook.

The advertisements did see photos of Rehtaeh Parsons appear, where she happened to be a teen from Canada who committed suicide in April after an image of her rape made its way online. Rehtaeh’s death made international headlines after police did not take any immediate legal action against her alleged rapists as well as cyber bullies, even after the photo did allegedly depict a quartet of boys raping her. The company that placed the ad in Facebook ran under the headline “Find Love in Canada,” and no longer is the website that the ad is linked to online.

Facebook said via a spokesman, “This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image from the internet and using it in their ad campaign. This is a gross violation of our ad policies and we have removed the ad and permanently deleted the advertiser’s account.”